


Grocery Shopping Is Not a Blood Sport

by ohjustdisarmalready



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bad Puns, Child Abandonment, Dark Comedy, Dark themes are not graphic but definitely exist, Found Family...?, Gen, POV First Person, Stranded in the Woods, child endangerment, mild horror themes, survivalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26960812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: If only I’d known that when I was a fresh-faced idiot hiker and software engineer from Portland, planning a multi-day hike all on my lonesome like the setup to a bad horror film. It’s hard to remember who that person even was. He feels like just…a face, now. Jeff from IT, former Starbucks barista, funny guy, outdoorsy, everybody’s bud. What’s behind that? Someone stupid enough to ignore the locals telling him not to go down the damned trail, evidently.Follow me through a day in the life.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Grocery Shopping Is Not a Blood Sport

**Author's Note:**

> More detailed content warnings in the end notes--spoilers abound, but if you're concerned, I would check those.
> 
> I genuinely considered sending this to a lit mag, but uh. fear.png. So I'm putting it up here, bc I don't want it to rot on my hard drive forever. I'm pretty proud of it and I don't want to forget that I made it.

I wake up in my cabin, like I do every morning, an hour or so after sunrise. Like every morning, I am surrounded by badly-tanned leather mistakes and the one successful foxpelt I’ve ever made. It’s my pillow. I’ve mostly stopped noticing the smell.

Like every morning, I haul myself up from my floor-nest. The weakest thread of morning light shines through the deer pelt I’ve tacked as best I can over the window—that thing’s frame is broken as hell, and frankly I needed the glass for more useful things than letting me see outside. I think I’m much happier without letting the outside see in at night, too.

My cabin is wooden and old and frankly, kind of a mess. What can I say, it’s a bachelor’s pad. The window frame in the middle of the back wall is only barely being saved from rot—lack of materials, lack of time, lack of carpentry skills. I’ll fix it in the winter. Shoved in a corner of the floor is a spare door that covers up my pantry and makes for a bedboard for my leather nest, which is actually both less smelly and less kinky than it sounds.

The rest of the house is all the same room—there was once a bedroom, but a tree fell through it before I lived here, so I used spare bits of foundation to board up the doorframe and scrounged the rest of the remains for parts when I was repairing the roof. My whole living space can’t be more than 200 square feet, and most of that is kitchen space or materials storage for whatever repairs I’m trying to do. Right now, it’s piled high with packs, rocks, shoe soles, deadwood, tools, and more leather. I’m trying to figure out a better solution to my garden flooding when it rains, so it’s a bit of an overcrowded mess. Still, I can’t complain—this space is plenty enough for me. And, bonus! It’s way cheaper than a studio in Portland. Eat your heart out, _Tiny House Hunters_ ; I haven’t paid rent in three years.

Today is a midsummer day, just teetering towards late summer, probably. I’ve got as much sunlight—and therefore, as much time—as I’ll ever have in a day. That means time to do inventory in the morning, of course, and then check out my traps, before…probably blueberry hunting, today. If I hurry, I can probably get past where I usually have to turn back before it gets dark. That means I get to harvest out west where I won’t be able to reach when the days get shorter. Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll need to make inventory fast.

I push the door/bedboard off of the pantry-hole in the floor. Admittedly, it’s a hole that rotted in the floor, which I accidentally put a foot through not long after finding the place; but I’ve since reinforced it with rocks and clay and dug out a little basement under the house to keep food in. Once I open it, the air in the pantry is cool and damp and a little stale, as always. The dank puff of mixed food smells is _way_ better than stale sweat and that cloying smell that always manages to stick to the cabin, though. I really should clean this fall. Maybe after the first frost, if I’ve got enough food and not too much needs fixing in the cabin.

Or I’ll put it off until winter. No gardening to be done in winter, and hunting season’s practically over by then. Small game is all I’ll be able to find, so I can take a few days off if I bring in enough of a haul during peak summer and early fall.

I drop a couple of feet into my ever-expanding crawlspace, hunched over to my hands and knees to fit. It’s too dark to see in here, so I try to keep things more or less divided by food type—meats in one corner, mostly smoked and ordered by creature of origin and how much I trust it to be safe and sanitary. I don’t exactly have a meat thermometer out here, and I don’t know shit all about meat preparation. I was a software engineer and hobbyist hiker, not a barbecue specialist.

Vegetables, mushrooms, and berries make up the rest of the pantry. Mushrooms tend to be better in fall, so I’m low on those unless I get desperate enough to harvest early—right now I’ve got five decent-sized early bloomers and two little guys. Berries are good for now, I’ve got the good luck to have blueberries all over and strawberries and raspberries to the west. Blackberries aren’t ready yet, but they will be soon.

With one woven mat half-full of dried strawberries, and three baskets (actually the pockets of my backpack, which I cut free when the straps were beyond salvation) full of fresh blueberries, I can eat for two days if I’m smart about it. Four days if I only need to be on top of my game for one of them. A week and a half if I’m just trying to keep off the worst of the hunger. With the addition of the jerky, bones for soup stock, and the smoked and dried meats from the other half of the pantry, I can make a comfortable (if lean) season out of it. I’d estimate that I could get to late fall before I started really hurting for food, if I had to. At least, this assuming the pantry doesn’t flood and rot out my food, and I’m not hurt too badly to get any more food at some point, and my garden and wild fruit still exist to supplement the pure caloric value of meat, and, and…

No rest for the wicked, really. I need to take in at least one more big catch before winter, preferably two. Otherwise it’s rabbits when I can catch them and scraping by when I can’t.

And to think I was so squeamish about hunting when I first started out here. The whole “killing and butchering” part seemed so repulsive to me back then that I didn’t start until I was well and truly desperate. I was lucky to survive that first winter. Not like I can get in the car and pop off to the grocery store. The sun would set before I got anywhere but deeper into the forest; and then…well, prior experience suggests that I’d wake up in my cabin, alive and well except for some scrapes and complete physical exhaustion and a gaping, horrible emptiness where my memory of the past night should go. And, oh, the impression that I shouldn’t be alive. Several more nights of waking up shaking and screaming from something I can’t remember. Existential horror. The feeling that my skin is not my own. You know, the natural result of staying out too late. It’s bad for your sleep schedule, and all.

If only I’d known that when I was a fresh-faced idiot hiker and software engineer from Portland, planning a multi-day hike all on my lonesome like the setup to a bad horror film. It’s hard to remember who that person even was. He feels like just…a face, now. Jeff from IT, former Starbucks barista, funny guy, outdoorsy, everybody’s bud. What’s behind that? Someone stupid enough to ignore the locals telling him not to go down the damned trail, evidently.

Something something good intentions, anyway. I’m here now, and I need to eat and live. In peak summer, that means checking my traps and gathering what I can from the berry patches.

Inventory is decreased from yesterday morning, since I spent most of yesterday setting up what was left of my last big catch to smoke, gardening, and patching the roof again. It always feels bad to end a day with less food than I started it with, but the house has to be secure. At least starving to death is slow, and therefore, slightly forgiving.

I grab a strip of jerky from the ‘pretty sure this is safe’ pile. My stomach doesn’t feel like it’s eating itself, so I don’t need much.

…then again, my stomach doesn’t feel like it’s eating itself. Sometimes that’s a bad sign. I grab another strip, and a handful of raspberries.

Better. I can eat what I find out there, too. It feels better to eat before the food comes in than to deplete the pantry. Less like I’m losing something. I’ll need that food this winter.

I haul myself up from the pantry and replace the door with a scrape, picking my way through my kitchen, which is actually the entire cabin now that the bedroom’s kaput. I try to keep the place relatively clean, generally, so as not to freak out the occasional lost hiker that makes its way to my cabin, but some stains just don’t clean, and I don’t have enough cabinet space for all my tools. Plus, with space taken up already by gardening stuff, it’s even more of a labyrinth of tools than usual. Only someone who knows their way already can really guarantee that they can cross the room without cutting their foot pretty good in the near-blackness of the cabin. Makes it real hard to run, or even walk.

I like to think it gives me an appreciation for the importance of interior lighting, and also, knowing the layout of your home. _I_ always make it safely across, anyway.

I close my eyes tight as I open the door, like always. The flood of light is a pain after hanging out underground in the pantry and in my tightly-shut cabin. As soon as I can, I blink out at the mountain that’s become my home.

Morning sunlight spears through the leaves in visible rays. I think I used to call them god rays. It paints my clearing in sunny golds and greens, full of brightness and life. My amateur garden’s leaves are outlined with an aura of light, and looking up, I can see every vein in each leaf of the trees.

The sky is so blue behind them I could almost believe I fell through the Blue Screen of Death and came out under the Blue Sky of Purgatory. The main footpath out from my house is dappled in interesting shapes that move with the breeze, and the littler paths I’ve worn in myself almost seem to whisper to me, inviting me. From the threshold of my door, every morning, I can see a vision of beauty.

If there were any birds singing, or little sounds from the vibrant ferns that carpet the forest, or any sound at all but a hollow howl of wind, the scene would be perfect.

Also, if the cabin I’d stepped out of weren’t dilapidated as all hell and rotting from the inside, held together by grit and endless patching jobs. That also ruins the idyllic forest scenery a little bit. That one’s solvable if I just don’t turn around, though. See no evil, and all. Actually, I’m not sure if that saying applies to this situation. There’s probably a better one that I’ve forgotten.

Besides the venus flytrap of landscaping imagery, nothing immediately grabs my attention in front of my house, so I duck back in for half a second to grab some tools. Not much for today—my biggest improvised pack for the berries, and a little hunting knife I made from shards of my phone battery.

I stopped taking my shoes off a year or two ago, so that and my trusty water bottle are all I need to get ready to go. I’m so glad I was smart enough to being a metal water bottle out here, at least. Like half the shit I brought or found, I’d probably be dead without it.

I squint at the sky again before taking off for the shaded woods, eating slowly as I go. The sunlight is gonna get hot later today, but I never burn. The weather never goes bad, either. It’s Henry David Thoreau’s wet dream.

I never understood hippies who ‘quit the rat race’ to ‘live as one with nature,’ or ‘find themselves,’ or whatever. Stupid fucking hikers just asking to get lost or worse out here. Especially when they leave behind hobbies, jobs, friends, even family like they’re nothing. It’s just such a shame to _Thoreau_ away your life like that.

I make a rusty snort. At least I can still make obscure transcendentalist humor. Comedy _transcends_ circumstance, I guess.

Okay, that one was weak. Maybe the heat’s getting to me sooner than I thought it would. That’s alright, they can’t all be _winters_.

Sometimes I wonder why not a lot of people come out here to visit me, but it’s probably got something to do with my killer jokes.

This is how I live. I keep my eyes peeled and my ears open as I take the main path, padding on bare rock and soft moss to avoid noise. Most creatures haven’t ventured this close to the cabin in a long time, but hope springs eternal, and all.

The loose circle of traps I’ve constructed around my house takes about an hour for me to check through at a decent trot, and only actually catches anything maybe two or three times a year, and involves a lot of effort besides; they’re not lethal at all. I’m not a good enough hunter to figure out how to build a trap that would actually kill anything. Frankly, I’m still making up for a lot of gaps in my skillset. Should have gone for mechanical engineering, I guess. It’s still worth the sunlight I put into checking my traps, though, because I wouldn’t be able to survive without big game to keep me going. Today will likely be empty, as always, but a one in a hundred chance of getting enough food for most of a season is worth an hour or so.

My first trap isn’t actually far from my cabin, and it’s right in the middle of the path. This one I put more effort into than the others, because after the first two times I got sick of food knocking at my door in the middle of the night, or helping itself in while I’m out and about and _eating my other food_. There’s a good goddamned reason I hide my pantry.

I poke around the mud at the bottom of the signpost. No footprints but mine. The loose bark and dead leaves casually littering a convenient fallen log that I pushed over the path are undisturbed. Nothing’s sat on it or stepped over, looks like. The little shelter I made out of the surviving lumber from the bedroom seems as hollow and unused as ever.

All the same, I rustle some leaves and snap a piece of bark loudly before pausing, absolutely still, to watch the forest.

The wind pushes a few leaves against one another. Some trees groan.

No other movement.

Cool. I take a swig from my water bottle and clear my throat a couple times before calling as loud as I can, voice crackling worse than leaves or bad wood, “Hello? Anyone? Is anybody there?”

I wait again. The sun is inching higher, a constant reminder that I’m burning daylight here. If anything were here, it definitely would have startled by now, at least. Guess I’d better _prey_ for better luck on the next one.

Predictably, the next one’s a no go, too. It isn’t all tricked out like my main trap, mostly because keeping a patch of dirt permanently muddy is pretty time-consuming, and I can’t be bringing trees down to block every path in the area. I’ve made quite a few of them by now, one of which is my trap path, a big old circle around my house. It would just be counterproductive to block that off, especially when a sign by itself will usually do the trick. I brush some dirt off the lettering and don’t bother calling out before moving on. Hurts my throat to speak too much. I finish up my breakfast on the way out.

Let’s see what’s behind sign post number three.

This one’s on a path that leads further up the mountain, so I don’t have much hope. I mostly put it there because it itched at me, having a path without a trap on it. Accordingly, it’s my worst—just a big old sheet of birch bark I found last fall and carved “IF LOST WAIT HERE—I WILL COME 4 U” into. No game is actually stupid enough to—

There’s something moving in the trap.

An electric chill spreads from my marrow to every inch of skin, every hair on my neck. Something is moving, and it’s in the trap. The world narrows in. Something in the trap. My fingertips tingle. Food in my trap. The balls of my feet grip into the moss. It’s moving. It’s alive.

 _Food_. My mouth starts watering as I collect myself. Have to be careful. Don’t want a fight. I slip my knives into my bag, right in easy reach but out of sight. Surprise is important. I comb my fingers through my hair. Don’t want it getting on guard. Might have a weapon of its own. I slink backwards and out of sight of the clearing, and straighten up the clothing I’ve salvaged from my last catch. I close my eyes, listening closely, and I swear I can hear breathing even from here. I don’t make a sound myself, except the blood rushing by my ears, making my face hot and my hands cold. Of course I don’t. I’m not a noisy, clumsy animal looking to get killed. I live here. I _live_. I run my hands through my hair again, and risk pouring a bit from my water bottle to quietly scuff off the worst of the dirt from my face.

I take a deep breath and force myself to assess. First impressions are important. Not much to be done about my clothes, I don’t think. The whole outfit’s a little too small, but it doesn’t say ‘serial killer who lives on an abandoned mountain’ (which I am _not_ ) like the remains of my original clothes do. I was really careful with the blood splatter on this one. No waste. Maybe this next catch will have another water bottle, or better yet, a hunting knife. Camping set? The possibilities are endless.

No matter what, this catch means I’m making it through this winter. Thanks, hiker.

Once I’m looking presentable, I square out my shoulders, bringing out an attempt at a closed-mouth smile. My dental hygiene scares prey off even faster than my mountain-man hair or tattered clothes.

I loudly walk down the path again, this time making sure to scrape on trees and finding a twig to step on. It’s a little too green to snap loudly, but hey, I tried. I whistle a little. Amazing how food will improve a guy’s mood, right?

No one calls out, but that’s okay. Sometimes the catch is alert before it sees me, some sort of sixth sense (or maybe common sense) ticking out that a predator is approaching. I just have to be patient. It’ll come out of hiding way the hell faster if I’m not making aggressive movements, and once it’s in arm’s reach it’ll be too late for it to run.

It’s so _hard_ to be patient when survival is just out of reach, though.

I take a deep breath as I round the bend. Smile, smile. But not too wide. Finally, a big catch, enough food to fill the pantry, if I make one more before winter I can even have a rainy day fund of food, maybe expand the pantry again, I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, smile, smile.

I can’t help but falter when I see the clearing.

…

It’s a kid.

It’s a little…kid. Too skinny at the wrists, from what I can see under its off-season sweater. Its stomach isn’t distended, so it’s not dying yet, but it’s not chubby like little kids should be. Its mop of dark hair might have been straight and short and smooth once, but that was a long time ago. It’s cut more raggedly than mine, and that’s saying something. It’s clearly seen me, but it’s not making much of a face about it.

I fight to keep the grimace off my face and recover from my stumble.

It stares at me. Its clothes aren’t in too bad of a shape, at least. I can probably use the fabric for something. It’s okay. It’s just like I didn’t make a big catch—like I caught a…fox, or something. Baby deer. I can still get something from this, right? Food is food, even if it’s not as much as I hoped.

 _Fuck_. And here I was so _relieved_. Stupid. Shit doesn’t just fall into my lap like that.

I don’t bother hiding my teeth as I force a smile.

“Hey, kiddo,” I grit out, friendly as a disappointed hunter can be with the pint-sized catch he’s making. “ _Knife_ to _meat_ you. Gotta say, I don’t get a lot of kids in these parts. It’s _veal_ nice of you to drop in.”

The food keeps staring. Not quite blankly. It’s clearly following my movement, turning to keep me square in its sights as I approach. It’s just…not reacting. Neutral.

Well, at least it won’t be a difficult kill.

“My name’s Jeff,” I say, crouching down and holding a hand out. The catch takes a step backward.

Annoying. I feel a bead of sweat run down my back.

“KT,” it mutters, or maybe, “Katie,” or “KD,” or “Kay T.”

“What’s that, lamb? Gotta speak up if you want Uncle Jeff to hear you. Or, you know, you could come a little closer,” I coax.

Food fidgets with the hem of its shirt, but doesn’t move. I wait a moment longer, but apparently that’s all I’m getting out of it. Not only is it disappointingly small, it’s rude, too.

Is it worth just whipping out a knife and going to town? No, I should be patient. Patience. Its clothes could get torn up if it tries to run, and then I get torn-up clothes and hardly any food out of this. If I’m gonna be wasting my daylight, I’m getting all I can from this catch.

“No?” I smile. “That’s alright. Guess I can understand a little _silence of the lamb_ here. After all, nothing is _Dahmer_ than talking to strangers, right? I bet your parents have _Lecter-ed_ you plenty on that.”

Absolutely no reaction.

Wow. Tough crowd. And here I thought kids were supposed to be tender.

“…no,” the kid mumbles. Now it’s picking at a loose thread in its sleeve, all without looking away from me for an instant. Is it _rejecting_ my handcrafted jokes? Fucking rude.

“Uh, what was that, bite-sized?” I try.

“…didn’t. Lecter.” It starts chewing on its sleeve. Gross. That’s how you get diseases.

“It’s _lecture_ , sweets. They didn’t _lecture_ you,” I correct. Hey, there’s an idea, actually. “Where are your parents, by the way? I’m sure they wouldn’t have left a guppy like you out here on your own, right?”

The kid’s mouth tugs towards a frown…maybe. Or maybe it’s grimacing because eating your own shirt is gross as hell and should be reserved for emergencies, and only then after you’ve cleaned it. It shakes its head.

Seriously, kid?

“Am I supposed to believe you’re just _out here_ , on your own, four _days_ into a mountain range no one ever comes back from? What the hell kind of parents would even…?” Despite myself, I’m losing a bit of my iron grip on my smile, but it’s not my fault. This kid is testing my goddamned nerves at every opportunity, and it’s said maybe three words put together. What the hell is wrong with this dead-eyed little hellion?

Well, not…dead-eyed, precisely. At least not yet. There’s something disturbingly alert in those too-dark eyes. Little kids shouldn’t look like they know exactly what the fuck you are. Aren’t they supposed to be all soft and ignorant?

It doesn’t even react to my frustration. Not a blink. It hasn’t blinked since I found it. It just watches, and waits for me to do something. What the hell is it looking for?

“Look,” I try. “Why don’t you come back to my lodge with me, okay? And when your parents come, they’ll find my signs up all around, so they’ll know where to wait for me. I can come back and look for them and bring them back once I’ve got you squared away. Is that alright, bunny?”

Inaudible mumbling. My hands are beginning to strain. With some effort, I stop flexing them. That’s gotta be creepy.

Experimentally, I stand up, keeping my shoulders rounded and my head ducked a little like I’m really just escorting a lost kid to a hiker’s lodge. At least this’ll be a quick kill. A shame I won’t have as much time for blueberries, but Pigeon here and whatever parents may or may not show up will make up for it. If I get my butchering done quick, I can put everything in the pantry before the parents see any inconveniently familiar remains.

They are coming, right? What kind of shit parents would leave a kid on this cursed mountain?

The kid seems perfectly willing to follow me as I take a step down the path. It scoots forward two or three tiny shuffles, remaining a good deal out of arm’s reach.

Falling prey to the classic ruse. Once it figures out I’m the only one around, food will always try to find its way to me. People need other people. Hell, even I need other people. To eat, at least.

“So, Goose, I’d offer you a snack or something, but seems I’m _flesh_ out.” I crack a couple jokes on the way back to the cabin. Walk backwards in order to check on how they land. I can’t help it, I so rarely get to entertain. The faces I get…well, usually they’re pretty good. The kid just looks up briefly from the path, before looking back where it’s stepping. I try again. “How about when your parents show up, we can have a _Donner party_? I might not look like much of a chef, but trust me, I can cook up _something they love_. It’ll be a _meal_ nice time.”

“…um…en…” the kid’s nearly inaudible. They’re falling behind a bit—must be getting tired. Who knows how long they’ve been on their feet. Where the hell did they spend the night, anyway?

“Sorry, Duckie, what was that? Am I going too fast?” I hold out a hand, which they once again stare at and do not take. Well, food doesn’t need social skills, I guess.

With a tiny cough, they say again: “Not coming. Parents. They’re not coming.”

Okay. Sure, kid. And you hatched out of an egg, too.

The kid really does look tired, now that I think about it. Kind of worn. Their sneakers are shabby and their nails are bitten to the quick. Maybe they really haven’t got anyone looking out for them. Killing them is going to be way too easy.

At least I can feel pretty good about killing the kid’s parents, should any appear. Two less scumbags in the world who would let a kid get this…sad-looking. Scrawny. I wonder if they’ll make any fun faces. Maybe they’ll cry. Maybe I’ll tell them that they brought a child onto a mountain that they should have known better than to ever climb. Maybe I’ll say that they were stupid and they deserve what’s coming for them. Maybe I’ll let them know that this world, so far removed from coffee and computers and vegan fad diets, has no pity and knows no mercy. They should never have come here.

It would suck if no one came looking for the kiddo. The one time I find a kid, and it doesn’t even come with more food attached.

They look exhausted and blank and…defeated, almost. I don’t know what’s keeping their feet moving, but it’s not even grit at this point, just a zombie-like refusal to be left behind. The light in their eyes is guttering before I’ve even touched the knife.

This kid isn’t like the stupid prey that I put down and eat. The expression on their face…they never relaxed when they saw me. They didn’t walk into these woods as some arrogant, naïve hunt just waiting to die. They’re just following me around, waiting for me to kill them. They’re not letting me make this _fun_.

Ugh, what a messy hunt this is turning out to be. The whole thing’s already depressing as hell. Fucking kid. I might as well make their last memories painless.

I slow to a stop and hold out both arms to the child, ignoring how they stare warily. I drop the smile a little bit too, just trying to channel gentleness, if I can remember it. Didn’t I used to like kids?

“C’mere, cupcake. Come here,” I offer. “You must be getting pretty tired, aren’t you?”

They hold up one hand, pinched close. _A little_. They take a tiny step back.

They don’t trust me.

“That’s alright. You don’t have to keep walking. It’s a short walk for a big guy like me, but for a munchkin it’s really long, isn’t it? I can carry you, if you come here,” I insist.

Kid shakes their head, but their arms cross in a tight self-hug. Their fingers dig into the knit of their off-season sweater. They’re breaking.

One more try, and I’ll just end it here and now if it doesn’t work out. No harm done. No one alive to remember it but me. Doesn’t really matter if I’m carrying a living pile of meat or a dead one. Probably should have killed them from the start, honestly. No chance to get attached.

“KT,” I take a chance with their name—it’s probably close enough. “it’s okay. I know it’s probably pretty scary to be lost in these big woods with a strange man you don’t know, and I, uh,” fuck, is it better to assume they were out at night or not, “you might have seen some scary things out there,” okay, better, nice and ambiguous, “but, uh, if it—if it helps, I can promise…if you come here, I’ll just carry you to my house? I won’t hurt you during the trip. It’s okay if you don’t trust me, but I promise I’m not gonna hurt you between here and the lodge if you come here to me.”

KT gnaws on their lip. I can see a little blood. It always annoys me when things bleed freely—that’s good calories going to waste, even if it isn’t particularly safe to drink. I choose to focus on that instead of the fact that I’m going to kill a kid who’s looking at me, stubbornly vigilant, like they know exactly what’s going to happen to them at the lodge.

There’s this look that food sometimes gets, an instant after it realizes that I’m not a friendly fellow hiker anymore, that’s kind of…the brows furrow, the eyes sometimes tear up, and it sneers or snarls like I’m some sort of disgusting monster. There’s a sort of acceptance in that, an acknowledgement that I was the better hunter, that I won and I’m going to live and it’s going to die, but there’s always a feeling like I’ve lost something, too. They all think they’re better than me, more _human_ than me, just because they don’t know desperation like I do. They think I’m some sort of disgusting killer and they think they see to the heart of me, but they don’t _know_. Killing them is a mercy. It’s a kindness to let their eyes stop darting, their heart stop pounding, the breath finally settle out of their lungs. They don’t have to fight to scrape by like I do. They don’t have to stare down horror and starvation every day, every year. No one ever looks at them like they’re losing their mind. They’re not survivors like I am, or they’d be able to stop me from killing them. It’s okay to do what you need to in order to survive. I’m doing what I need to.

KT shuffles forward a half-pace. They’re inches out of reach if I were to lunge at them. I keep eye contact and try to remember _patience_ as they scrape the moss off the forest floor with their little boots.

They would starve in a handful of days out here. I’m being merciful. They won’t see it coming.

“That’s it, pumpkin,” I murmur. My voice is gonna be shot to hell after this. I haven’t spoken this much since…what, two catches ago? That chatty hiker. I waited for it to realize my shitty cannibal puns weren’t jokes before I killed it. It had the nerve to act like I was some kind of horror movie ax murderer. I killed it before I got to _axe_ it which franchise I should be in.

I have to try really hard not to giggle at that. A high-pitched noise almost escapes me, but I squash it and stay perfectly still. You’re supposed to put kids’ sense of safety and security over your own needs, and all. I don’t want to scare them. I’m just going to eat them.

KT is in arm’s reach, just far enough that they might be able to skitter backwards before I could catch them. I hold my position despite how my fingers are shaking. So close. Why are they coming closer to me?

It’s not like I can avoid killing them. I can’t feed another mouth, much less a growing kid who can’t help me hunt or even keep up with me in the woods. No matter what, they’re going to starve this winter, or I will and then they’ll starve because they can’t get their own goddamned food. Keeping them alive like some kind of trapped canary is just gonna hurt us both in the long run, and make it harder to eat them when I need to.

KT sniffles. They’re even getting a fucking cold, they couldn’t be more of a liability if they tried. What the fuck is wrong with this kid? Everything. Everything is wrong with this kid, and I’m gonna end their misery before it becomes my misery.

They’re close enough, now. I delicately put one hand on their shoulder, just as insurance, before I scoop them up. They barely weigh anything, aren’t even carrying any useful gear as far as I can tell. They curl in defensively as I stand up. They don’t try to run or anything. That’s nice, that’s good.

They squirm until their head is resting on my chest, which is just the kind of inconvenient that doesn’t normally happen to me, because normally my food is dead by the time I get to carrying it anywhere.

My pouch—and therefore, my knife—is too awkward to reach while holding a kid. I wouldn’t be able to get the leverage I need to make this quick and painless and avoid The Look.

That’s alright. I promised. I won’t kill them until we get home. I’ll do it then. Just as soon as we get in the door.

Oh. I’ve been eerily silent while picking them up, haven’t I? I should say something, or this is gonna be an awkward fucking walk.

Well, I’ve got one well that never runs dry.

“So, Cupcake, why did the cannibal volunteer at the soup kitchen?” I ask.

“…” says KT.

“To serve man!”

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: he does not kill KT. Time to have a weird cannibal family in the woods ig
> 
> Please do let me know what you thought in the comments--and any theories you had! I had a couple of people think KT was some sort of monster, which wasn't my intention but would be really interesting. Also, I really like Jeff as a character. He's horrible.
> 
>  **content warnings (contains spoilers!)**  
>  References to cannibalism; that child endangerment tag is not a joke; serial killer; irreverent attitude towards murder; dehumanization by POV character; references to starvation; narrator is a fucked up person in a fucked up situation


End file.
